Menai Strait panorama

The Menai Strait (Welsh: Afon Menai, the “River Menai”) is a narrow stretch of shallow tidal water about 14 miles long, which separates the island of Anglesey from the mainland of Wales.

The strait is bridged in two places – the main A5 road is carried over the strait by Thomas Telford’s elegant iron suspension bridge, the first of its kind, opened in January 1826, and adjacent to this is Robert Stephenson’s 1850 Britannia Tubular Bridge. Originally this carried rail traffic in two wrought-iron rectangular box spans, but after a disastrous fire in 1970, which left only the limestone pillars remaining, it was rebuilt as a steel box girder bridge. When crossing the Britannia Bridge from the Gwynedd bank, one might like to look down to the right to observe a house built on a small outcrop of rocks Ynys Gored Goch, right in the middle of the strait (shown in the panorama). On the left of the bridge there is a statue in honour of Lord Nelson built on the side of the strait